Comcast messes up on DMCA notice, leaves little hope for three strike recourse

John Aprigliano was a little confused when he received a DMCA takedown notice from his cable provider Comcast earlier this month. The letter alleged that Aprigliano had downloaded a movie called Cadillac Records via Bittorrent. The only problem: Aprigliano didn't even know that such a movie existed. From his blog:

"I have come to learn that "Cadillac Records" is a movie with Adrien Brody and that their marketing for this movie must have really sucked because with what ever thousands or millions of dollars they used to promote this movie, I have never heard of it - even once."

Aprigliano called Comcast's tech support to let them know that this was a mistake, and of course the friendly tech support person on the other side of the line didn't believe him. So he called again. And again. And again, until he could finally convince them that he wasn't actually the infringer.

Turns out Aprigliano had gotten a new cable modem from Comcast two months prior to the alleged infringement, but the old modem was still associated with his account, even though it was now in use by some unknown Adrien Brody fan - a confusion Aprigliano could only clear up because he was tech-savvy enough to ask the right questions. Here's a snippet from his paraphrased phone call:

aprigliano: "What was the MAC address of the offending cable modem?"

Tech 2: "OO:BE:..."

aprigliano: "Hold on! That is not my current MAC address. I have had this cable modem, and IP number, since the end of October."

Tech 2: "IP numbers change."

aprigliano: "MAC addresses don't change."

Tech 2: "Yeah. Um. They don't. Please hold."

It's great that Aprigliano got his name cleared, but it's very unfortunate that this took not only a lot of persistence, but also technical knowledge. Most people have never even heard of MAC addresses, much less of the fact that such an address could help to prove their innocence in a case of alleged infringement.

Comments

Hmmmm, I had a similar situation with a cell phone a few years ago. I got a phone and it didn't work. The very same day, I turned it in and received a replacement. A year and a half later, I got a notice that I was in collection for a phone bill of hundreds of dollars for unpaid fees on my cell phone (which was fully paid up). The phone bill that listed the charges showed ONE phone call every day for all that time to the same number. It turns my name as owner had never been removed from the defective phone. It had not been given to anyone else, but wherever it went, it kept doing something like "calling home" to verify its connection to the system -- for more than a year. And they were charging me for the calls! Again, even though I'm not a techie and have almost no knowledge of this stuff, I'm the one who told THEM what was happening and got them to ditch the charges and disassociate my name from that phone. Less persevering people could find themselves paying lots of money for these kinds of errors. The tech companies are far from infallible, folks.